” We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness”
One of the most interesting innovations in the evolution of democracy, is the concept of representative democracy: whereby a few are elected to make decisions on behalf of the population. The lower house of the Westminster System typically has representatives from electorates which are groups of people clustered in geographies that form a critical mass, whereas the upper house represents a different class: in England, a plutocracy but in America, it was revised to give each of the states an equal vote (though, in is still a plutocracy with just a more accountable way of election).
Overall, I think this is a good model to keep. But with the growth of the party system around the world (which has become the way government is done, a critical function that ironically not defined in most constitutions), it has become broken: using America as the case in point, the Republican control of the lower house during Obama’s first term (and Democrat control of the Senate) had politics get in the way and risked the future of the country at a time when unity was needed the most. As Jefferson said, when a government becomes destructive of the ends, it’s the right of the people to alter or abolish it. The party system is failing our democracy.
The Pirates
A lot has changed in the last 10 years, let alone 100 and 1000 years when a lot of our democratic tradition has been written. In particular, the Internet has become a new force in our society that has transformed every industry that comes in its way. It will only be a matter of time when the government gets its own shake up and that time may becoming. Gregory Ferenstein wrote an interesting post recently on innovations thanks to the Internet, with the most interesting one below:
Pirate Party
They’re less fun than a boat full of drunken sailors, but more influential in Germany than many third parties are in the United States. After winning 15 parliamentary seats in Germany, the Pirate Party has developed an intriguing crowdsourced platform of decision-making known as “liquid feedback.” The trust-based voting system permits members to leave decision-making to those they know are more knowledgeable, while preserving the inclusiveness of direct democracy. The Pirate Party is currently expanding its ranks throughout the globe.
The liquid feedback platform may be the most powerful way to fix the current system of government. Imagine that we all have equal votes, but you trusted my views on the economy more than your own views — you could allocate your vote to me, where I could make it for you. Now let’s say I came to trust an economist on matters of policy, so I would allocate my vote, which includes yours, to that economist when she makes decisions (so in effect, her votes also counts on your and my vote). And so on: what we have here is representative democracy in it’s most beautiful form. It’s only now with the Internet can we allow a system like this to exist.
This is a system that could be built into the current governance of our society. And even better, it it doesn’t need to be written into the constitution, for it to have an impact: it could be done in parallel. A shadow government could emerge where people could nominate their votes to people who end up becoming super delegates on issues. The influence these delegates could be so powerful that it could trigger a vote of confidence on our elected leaders, not to mention additional accountability on their decisions as they are compared to a benchmark by the populace. Maybe even our elected representatives in the legislature could take inspiration for their decisions not by the party they are a part of, but by what the super delegates vote.
And perhaps, this could be the way we fix our democracy. Not by changing the system laid out by the constitution of great democracies in the world like America and Australia, but by changing the way our representatives organise their votes. No more liberal, labor, democrat and republican — but a liquid party, where the people who we elect into government under this banner promise to follow the direction of the population through the votes of the super delegates. Delegates determined by the liquid democracy platform that we all have access to anytime we want to vote on an issue.
